Archives for 03/05/2012 5:44 pm

It’s been a while since we saw a new batch of cartoonist-inspired covers for Penguin Graphic Classics editions, all designed by Paul Buckley.
But here you go. Mike Mignola on Joseph Conrad’sHeart of Darkness (which was adapted as APOCALYPSE NOW, for those who came in late).

Just to finish our “digital news Monday,” Marvel’s recently teased “Infinite” something-or-other will be revealed this Saturday as part of SXSWi’s Screenburn video game conference. Despite the gaming setting, it’s expected this will have something to do with digital comics, as indicated by the panel description:

Twin press releases today that Dark Horse’s digital comics offering are coming to B&N’s Nook and the Kobo Vox, a lesser known but respected platform. Popular titles like MASS EFFECT,HELLBOY, STAR WARS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SERENITY, and SIN CITY will all be available for both platforms. DH was already on their own store and via various Apple platforms.

While they haven’t reached Marvel’s level of reformatting their trades, DC does release a dizzying array of formats for their classics, from the Absolutes to the omnibus to the deluxe and…even more. (We’re actually starting a column on reprints this week to make some sense of it all.) But it seems an upcoming new edition of BATMAN: YEAR ONE, the Frank Miller/David Mazzucchelli classic, isn’t the one you should be giving permanent home to on your shelf. The Comics Journal has the scoop.

The DCU is getting a new look for Shazam, and the New York Post has the first glimpse. Once known as Captain Marvel and The Big Red Cheese, he’s now officially Shazam, and a backup strip in JUSTICE LEAGUE by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank debuts in JL #7 later this month.

Based on the new art and focus, this Shazam seems to be trading in his old crew of a talking tiger and cute bunny for a different crowd—say, Hellblazer and the Phantom Stranger.

According to this posting on the Source, DC collections are adding LoC information and will be added to the library’s holdings. The Library of Congress has a few other comics connections of late, including an SPX collection, so the place of comics in the nation’s greatest library is clearly growing.

5 million of those came in December alone. That’s 1.4 millino less than the 6.4 million comics sold in the same period, ICv2 notes. However, a significant portion of the digital comics were free, so it’s not a direct comparison.

Although when a final settlement was reached in the epic Gaiman/McFarlane legal battle a few weeks ago, most people thought it was all over. But now there is The Accounting. Daniel Best dug up the settlement papers which mentioned just how much money Todd McFarlane might owe Neil Gaiman. Just to be clearer about this, the money in question is in an escrow account and there is really no discussion over its exact disposition. As noted it would go to legal fees, or Neil Gaiman or other things. In addition, the profits from the characters Gaiman co-created—the actual subject of the lawsuit—have yet to be audited.